Found here will be a collection of stories from my days at Fertile Ground Farm. It's just 4 acres big, but full of all sorts of scrumptuous vegetables & lots of adventure. I make no promises on the regularity of my updates, but I do promise to write up some of my favourite moments from time to time. www.fertilegroundcsa.com

Friday, June 29, 2012

Here's a new twist on summer camp! Kids spend the week at a working farm, doing all the awesome crafty camp stuff, but with an opportunity to be engaged with daily farm chores, vegetable garden work, livestock
care and harvesting tasks. If your family values the outdoors, good
food and a healthy lifestyle and are looking for something special this
summer Everdale Farm Camp might be worth looking into. The camp’s goal is to
connect your child to the story of their food, from seed to plate.

Everdale is the farm I did my internship at 5 years ago - they have a tonne of experience doing fantastic, fun educational work with kids.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

2 days ago 1 of the hives swarmed. Trina - our beekeeper - was
expecting it. The bees had capped new queen cells and she didn't feel
comfortable squishing any more of them. Armed with a bee box, we'd been
left with the instructions to call her if they swarmed, and put out the
baited box.

2 days ago, it happened. My intern Erik
heard a remarkably loud buzzing sound & saw a lot of activity at
the hive. They gathered on a branch like this:

But
as time passed, the swarm got really heavy and one of the branches
they'd gathered on collapsed. Then the bee ball looked like this:

Maybe
this was a disconcerting progression of events for them...maybe they
just re-thought their exit strategy, but either way the oddest thing
happened. 1 ball disappeared, and the other one shrunk slowly as all the
bees flew back to the very hive from whence they came. This was an
unexpected turn of events. By the time Trina arrived to take a look at
the hive, it was like the swarm never happened. Except...she couldn't
find the queen. Mysterious. It would seem incredible if an entire swarm
had managed to slip away without us noticing. And besides, we'd seen
many of them fly back!

Today, it happened again. Erik
saw the activity just as he was heading into town on an errand. I ran
for the bee box, only to discover it was in the van that had just driven
away! Fortunately, the van returned in time & I was able to set up a
bait box in a tree a ways away:

This time the bees made a picture-perfect strawberry-shaped swarm tucked under the shelter of a spruce bough.

And
best of all, Trina & her husband Chris made it to the farm before
they flew off and were able to successfully capture them!! They sawed
off the branch & shook the bees into a waiting box.

(You can't see them, but the bees are under that branch!)

Here she is placing the lid on their (temporary) new home. Now we have 4 hives at the farm - hooray!